Digital marketing is all about attracting people to a business. What will persuade someone to click, to follow, to register, to buy? In an online space where consumers can change their tastes and minds faster than lightspeed, learning how to grow your brand’s following into lasting (and profitable) relationships means learning not only your customers inside and out, but your business, too. So, what exactly are the Jedi mind tricks to converting your audience? Here are our top three lessons you’ll need to master:
Psych 101: Branding
Your brand is more than a colorful logo and fancy words. Don’t get us wrong, though—it’s that, too. When using principles of psychology in your branding, the most forefront component is indeed your logo and visuals. Color can play an important role in how your brand is perceived, especially in certain regions or industries. For example, white is a rather neutral or even pure color in the west but represents mourning in countries like China. Lots of red in a color scheme may be very successful in the food industry as it has connotations around hunger, but perhaps not so much in the hospitality industry due to its associations with aggression.
It’s important to remember that a comprehensive brand strategy also includes your company story and culture, business and buyer personas, and tone/voice. All of these assets together help you present your business to the public to build recognition and reliability. The trick to applying psychology effectively in these areas is twofold:
- Consistency – build confidence by sticking to a script (so to speak). No matter the asset or who in your company created it, from sponsored video ads to daily Twitter post copy, it should always look and sound like it came from your brand as a defined, singular entity.
- Transparency – build trust by making your business’ values clear in both your established company story and your continued company culture. Contemporary consumers are more likely to support brands that align with their own goals and ideals.
Intermediate Psych: Emotion Marketing
Humans, though logical creatures, are also highly motivated by their own feelings, on which we base most of our decisions. One way you can steer buyer behavior toward your bottom-line using psychology is by evoking your audience’s emotions. The two primary avenues to put this to work are your content marketing and social media marketing.
Storytelling is your best tool when it comes to effective content marketing. The story could be the history of your company, developments it’s going through now, showcasing an employee’s journey in your company, case studies of your customers, or describing scenarios your business’s products or services can address. These are all types of stories you can use to influence the emotions of your audience—even better if you tell these stories with audiovisual assets. Just don’t forget to take current trends and events into account when you’re planning your content, however. The shift in stories used in ads throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has shown just how important emotion is to your marketing strategy.
Social media can be a hotbed of human emotion, so having that consistent brand persona in place is a crucial first step to bringing emotion-based tactics into your social media marketing. Depending on your brand persona, humorous evocations can be particularly useful here, including the use of memes or joining in on TikTok trends. If your brand persona is more authoritative or technical, finding ways to humanize your company is a great strategy to incorporate emotion marketing. Such opportunities could include showcasing your employees on IGTV, resharing and commenting on user-generated content, and relating posts to local and/or current events.
Advanced Psych: Customer Relations
Communication is everything. How we interact with each other is integral to how we experience and perceive the world. So, it’s one thing to present your business to a screen, where the communication focuses on who your brand is. When engaging your audience directly in your digital marketing—in remarketing emails, replying to Facebook reviews, sliding into their DMs—it’s time to focus on who your customer is. This will take everything you know about your customer persona, the guidelines of your brand voice and values, and emotional strategies to succeed.
The top three psychological shortcuts you can take to hook your customer in one-to-one communications are:
Personalize
- It seems like such a simple thing but…address them by name!
- Without deviating too much from your brand voice, mirror their language and tone.
- Make them feel that you are invested in their individual experience.
- Be sure your automations and chatbots are programmed for this as well.
Align
- People like to feel like they’re part of something. Make it clear that you’re on their side and that the brand is there to serve them.
- Use language that evokes a sense of belonging (“part of the [Brand] family”) and being on the same team toward a goal or against a problem (“we can achieve/fix this together”), and that is complimentary in some way (“thank you for your valuable input”).
Simplify
- When talking to your customer directly, you can do exactly that: be direct. You want the shortest journey from conversation to conversion, without going into “selling” mode.
- Address needs and issues up front.
- Have clear calls-to-action.
- Direct to specific landing pages.
- In its simplest definition, a conversation is a transaction – words in exchange for words. You are still trying to sell something though (if not a product or service, then loyalty) so a direct intersection you can use here is offering a reward for their communication.
How can you use psychology to create a more personal, profitable relationship with your audience?
At Go Getter Marketing Group, we are thought leaders in all facets of brand strategy, social media, and digital marketing. Contact us today to find out more about how we can level up your brand voice and engage your audience.